should make firm the peace between the two nations, “diis testibus,” “the gods being witnesses.” Here Tacitus makes an explanation:[102] “It is the custom of [Oriental] kings, as often as they come together to make covenant, to join right hands, to tie the thumbs together, and to tighten them with a knot. Then, when the blood is [thus] pressed to the finger tips, they draw blood by a light stroke, and lick[103] it in turn. This they regard as a divine[104] covenant, made sacred as it were, by mutual blood [or blended lives].”
There are several references, by classical writers, to this blood-friendship, or to this blood-covenanting, in connection with Catiline’s conspiracy against the Roman Republic. Sallust, the historian of that conspiracy, says: “There were those at that time who said that Catiline, at this conference [with his accomplices] when he inducted them into the oath of partnership in crime, carried round in goblets human blood, mixed with wine; and that after all had tasted of it, with an imprecatory oath, as is men’s wont in solemn rites [in “Sharb el ’Ahd,”[105] as the Arabs would say] he opened to them his plans.”[106] Florus, a later Latin historian, describing this conspiracy, says: “There was added the pledge of the league—human blood—which they drank as it was borne round to them in goblets.”[107] And yet later, Tertullian suggests that it was their own blood, mingled with wine, of which the fellow-conspirators drank together. “Concerning the eating of blood and other such tragic dishes,” he says, “you read (I do not know where), that blood drawn from the arms, and tasted by one another, was the method of making covenant among certain nations. I know not but that under Catiline such blood was tasted.”[108]
In the Pitti Palace, in Florence, there is a famous painting of the conspiracy of Catiline, by Salvator Rosa; it is, indeed, Salvator Rosa’s masterpiece, in the line of historical painting. This painting represents the covenanting by blood. Two conspirators stand face to face, their right hands clasped above a votive altar. The bared right arm of each is incised, a little below the elbow. The blood is streaming from the arm of one, into a cup which he holds, with his left hand, to receive it; while the dripping arm of the other conspirator shows that his blood has already flowed into the commingling cup.[109] The uplifted hand of the daysman between the conspirators seems to indicate the imprecatory vows which the two are assuming, in the presence of the gods, and of the witnesses who stand about the altar. This is a clear indication of the traditional form of covenanting between Catiline and his fellow conspirators.
As far back, even, as the fifth century before Christ, we find an explicit description of this Oriental rite of blood-covenanting, in the writings of “the Father of History.” “Now the Scythians,” says Herodotus,[110] “make covenants in the following manner, with whomsoever they make them. Having poured out wine into a great earthen drinking-bowl, they mingle with it the blood of those cutting covenant, striking the body [of each person having a part in it] with a small knife, or cutting it slightly with a sword. Thereafter, they dip into the bowl, sword, arrows, axe, and javelin.[111] But while they are doing this, they utter many invokings [of curse upon a breach of this covenant];[112] and, afterwards, not only those who make the covenant, but those of their followers who are of the highest rank, drink off [the wine mingled with blood].”
Again Herodotus says of this custom, in his day[113]: “Now the Arabians reverence in a very high degree pledges between man and man. They make these pledges in the following way. When they wish to make pledges to one another, a third man, standing in the midst of the two, cuts with a sharp stone the inside of the hands along the thumbs of the two making the pledges. After that, plucking some woolen floss from the garments of each of the two, he anoints with the blood seven stones [as the “heap of witness”[114]] which are set in the midst. While he is doing this he invokes Dionysus and Urania. When this rite is completed, he that has made the pledges [to one from without] introduces the [former] stranger to his friends[115]—or the fellow citizen [to his fellows] if the rite was performed with a fellow-citizen.”
Thus it is clear, that the rite of blood-brotherhood, or of blood-friendship, which is to-day a revered form of sacred covenanting in the unchangeable East, was recognized as an established custom among Oriental peoples twenty-three centuries ago. Its beginning must certainly have been prior to that time; if not indeed long prior.
An indication of the extreme antiquity of this rite would seem to be shown in a term employed in its designation by the Romans, early in our Christian era; when both the meaning and the origin of the term itself were already lost in the dim past. Festus,[116] a writer, of fifteen centuries or more ago, concerning Latin antiquities, is reported[117] as saying, of this drink of the covenant of blood: “A certain kind of drink, of mingled wine and blood, was called assiratum by the ancients; for the ancient Latins called blood, assir.” Our modern lexicons give this isolated claim, made by Festus, of the existence of any such word as “assir” signifying “blood,” in “the ancient Latin language;”[118] and some of them try to show the possibilities of its origin;[119] but no convincing proof of any such word and meaning in the Latin can be found.
Turning, however, to the languages of the East, where the binding vow of blood-friendship was pledged in the drink of wine and blood, or of blood alone, from time immemorial, we have no difficulty in finding the meaning of “assir.” Asar (אָסַר) is a common Hebrew word, signifying “to bind together”—as in a mutual covenant. Issar (אִסָּר), again, is a vow of self-renunciation. Thus we have Asar issar ’al nephesh (אָסַר אִסָּר עַל נֶפֶשׁ) “To bind a self-devoting vow upon one’s life”[120]—upon one’s blood; “for the blood is the life.”[121] In the Arabic, also, asara (اسر) means “to bind,” or “to tie”; while asar (اسر) is “a covenant,” or “a compact”; and aswâr (اسوار) is “a bracelet”; which in itself is “a band,” and may be “a fetter.”[122] So, again, in the Assyrian, esiru (
7. THE BOND OF THE COVENANT.
Just here it may be well to emphasize the fact, that, from time immemorial, and the world over, the armlet, the bracelet, and the ring, have been counted the symbols of a boundless bond between giver and receiver; the tokens of a mutual, unending covenant. Possibly—probably, as I think—this is in consequence of the primitive custom of binding, as an amulet, the enclosed record—enclosed in the “house of the amulet”[125]—of the covenant of blood on the arm of either participant in that rite; possibly, again, it is an outgrowth of the common root idea of a covenant and a bracelet, as a binding agency.
Blood-covenanting and bracelet-binding seem—as already shown—to be intertwined in the languages of the Oriental progenitors of the race. There are, likewise, indications of this intertwining in the customs of peoples, East and West. For example, in India, where blood-shedding is peculiarly objectionable, the gift and acceptance of a bracelet is an ancient covenant-tie, seemingly akin to blood-brotherhood. Of this custom, an Indian authority says: “Amongst the rajput races of India the women adopt a brother by the gift of a bracelet. The intrinsic value of such pledges is never looked to, nor is it necessary that it should be costly, though it varies with the means and rank of the donor, and may be of flock silk and spangles, or of gold chains and gems. The acceptance of the pledge is
